May 2023
Events
- Class Trip on May 2, 2023
- PTA Meeting on May 24, 2023
- Memorial Day celebrated on May 29, 2023- there is no school
Reading
We will be starting our next unit, “Non-Fiction Book Clubs.” This unit will teach the children to facilitate their own group discussions. The students will be creating their own jobs to contribute to group conversations. As a class, we will be bringing back our information on the different non-fiction reading skills, such as solving tricky words, understanding text features, and working on the main idea of books. The students will be able to compare and contrast the information and structure in their books to share with their peers. All in all, this unit is giving the autonomy to the students to conduct their own discussions to bring back to our meeting area to share in a whole group setting. At home, students should continue to read both non-fiction and fiction books. To build comprehension, students can be asked many questions about the characters in the book (fiction), or the main idea with supporting details (non-fiction).
Writing
The students will continue our unit called, Gripping Narrative Stories, where they will write a short story that will have their readers on the “edge of their seats.” First, the students will think of a real-life story to then exaggerate to create a fictional narrative. Throughout the unit, the students will be learning how to make a story suspenseful. They will be working with their peers to make sure their readers understand their story, as well as “sitting on the edge of their seats.” At home, the students can work on identifying a beginning, middle, and end of stories. Not to mention, whisper reading all writing to make sure that everything written makes sense. Editing and revision are very important.
Math
We will be finishing unit 8 and then we will be moving into unit 12: Measurement with the Metric System. Students will be learning all about the ruler and how to measure items in centimeters. We will discuss meters, centimeters, and touch upon millimeters. With this unit, the explanation of base 10 units will begin, and compare this idea to the learning of feet and inches. At home, students can always practice using a ruler to measure items with an adult. They become explorers and architects when we hand them the ruler.
Science
We will continue Changing Landforms: The Disappearing Cliff unit. Here students use models to investigate how win and water can cause changes to landforms. They learn that landforms made of solid rock undergo small-scale changes, and that over time, these changes add up to big changes. The unit begins with an introduction to changes to the cliffs by Oceanside Recreation Center, which serves as the anchor phenomenon for the unit. Exploration and investigation of models (through both physical models and student-made diagrams) allow students to generate and explore questions about wind and water changing landforms. At home you can search the internet to learn and discover different types of landforms and how they were formed.